Beijing is getting cold...

It’s the end of October now and it’s quite cold here. I don’t have a thermometer so I don’t really know the temperature though. People say it’s going to get very cold here too. My home is always freezing cold in the mornings and nights since the heat isn’t turned on until November 15th. I don’t know how it works, but everyone in this district will get their heating beginning on that day. Along with the cold weather come new inconveniences too. Our shower does not have hot water. Maybe one out of every ten times it has some warm water. So that just adds to the cold feeling.

I joined the gym at my school. It’s a decent gym with everything a normal gym in the United States would have, but it’s smaller and compacted into two narrow rooms. I think working out at the gym or just working out at all is a new concept in China. It’s like playing golf is in America. It seems to mostly be the well off Chinese people with spare time and extra money that join the gym. The gym I joined is a bit different though since it’s located on my school’s campus. It’s mostly foreigners who go there.

I’m beginning to lose taste for most of the food the family cooks. We usually eat the same few dishes every week and they aren’t very good. Every once in a while they make something nice, but then it might be something not so nice in my opinion. The family served pig feet and pig tail this week, which wasn’t appetizing to me at all. The father of the family said he loved to eat it. I couldn’t tell if it even had any meat on it or if it was just fat. It was kind of like gelatin. Most of the meat they serve is just a bone with a small bit of meat and fat on it. There’s so little of anything on the bone it looks like it’s already been eaten by somebody. We did have chicken and chicken broth soup this week though, which I thought tasted good.

I’ve tried to eat out in restaurants more these days since I need more to eat now that I’m exercising again. We have quite a few restaurants around here. Most restaurants serve the same foods, but some might cook one thing better than another. The standard restaurant around here is just an open room with tables and chairs. No crazy decorations like T.G.I. Fridays or Chili’s restaurants. Most of the time the restaurant walls are just bare. They seem very practical. Service is usually much better than American restaurants. The restaurant workers always seem to take their jobs seriously and are always polite. There’s no such thing as tipping in China either. I’ve recently come to realize that Chinese food isn’t really that healthy. There are a lot more vegetables, but they are always cooked or fried in grease. I think almost every dish I’ve had is greasy and oily. It’s surprising that people don’t get fat though. I’ve definitely not gained any weight since I’ve been here. The restaurants are always very fast in serving your food. It usually never takes more than ten minutes to have all your food. Usually, most restaurants will give you a pot of tea free of charge to go with your meal too.

This Friday, I decided to check out the Halloween party put on by BLCU’s English Association. The party wasn’t fun though. Maybe three people dressed up in costumes. It’s understandable though. Chinese people just don’t understand the concept of Halloween. They did have a jack-o-lantern and some pizza though. Most forms of Chinese entertainment are just something I don’t understand yet. It usually just involves a host talking a lot. I mean a lot. It seems like Chinese people can just keep talking forever if they want to. Eventually they put on music and nobody even danced to it, except the foreign guy who dressed up as a vampire. He won the costume contest too since he was the only one that really dressed up.

That night, I was walking down the street to a restaurant on campus and I noticed a person singing in front of me. He bumped shoulders with some guy that walked past him like it was nothing. I wasn’t sure what was up with this guy. We both ended up walking onto the campus and he said in perfect English “Hey man. Where are you from?” I told him I was from the United States. He said he was a nomad from Tibet. That explained why he looked so different from normal Beijingers. He was shorter, had darker skin, long hair, and wore a bandana around his head. He was a real Tibetan who lived a nomadic life before coming to Beijing to study English. I haven’t met anyone in China who spoke English as well as he did. I told him I really wanted to see Tibet sometime. He told me to skip the main city of Lhasa since it’s turned into more of a tourist destination these days. He said to travel outside to find the authentic culture. We talked for about ten minutes before he had to go. It was the most interesting conversation I’ve had with anyone in China so far, but I won’t write about it here. It was mostly about how Tibetan culture is being ruined by the influx of people to the region, how it’s becoming a money making thing now, and so on. Hopefully I’ll run into him again sometime because I have a lot of questions to ask him. After speaking with him, I want to go to Tibet even more now. It’s a three day train ride though, and most people don’t speak Chinese there.

Saturday, Ben and I went to a big electronics store so he could buy a palm pilot. We walked for about an hour before we got there. It was a new multiple story building filled with electronics of every kind. I decided to take a look around the store as Ben talked with the salespeople. I didn’t step more than five meters before salespeople accosted me with words I didn’t understand. Me and Ben were the only foreigners in the store, and I couldn’t escape people trying to show me things and sell something to me. One saleslady, who spoke English, kept asking me if I wanted to buy a computer. I kept saying I didn’t need a computer. Then she asked if I had any friends who needed a computer. I told her my friends didn’t need a computer either. Then she kept asking if I was positive they didn’t need a computer. I kept telling her I was positive they didn’t need one. Then she got the idea I wasn’t interested in buying a computer and walked away. I couldn’t take a close look at anything because of all the distracting people. I did notice that some good up-to-date electronics could be bought for a cheaper price here than the United States though. I couldn’t stand all the haggling so I just left the store and waited outside for Ben. He ended up getting a nice palm pilot for about $150.

After the electronics store, we went to an Indian food restaurant. It was a very nice, little restaurant. It was authentic Indian food, and the head cook even took our order. We started speaking in Chinese to him but he spoke English. It was pricey compared to a normal meal but it was worth it. I think I spent six dollars for my meal. The food was better than most Indian food I’ve had in the United States.

After lunch, we went to play pool at a pool hall near the train station. This area is called Wudaokou and is like a Korean town. I’ve been to Wudaokou lots of times, but I never really realized how many Koreans are here until now. We took an elevator to the fourth floor of a new building overlooking the subway station. I think the pool hall was Korean run, and the signs were even in Korean. We paid a lot of money for one hour of pool. Maybe we each paid five dollars. It was a nice room though, with flat screen TV’s, couches, internet connection, and soft drink machines.

The pool hall is next to the school Ben attends in the evenings. Ben saw his usual cab driver outside, so we got a ride in his illegal taxi. I don’t know what the deal is with illegal taxis here. They’re illegal, but they like to attract more attention that normal cabs. Outside my apartment complex, about ten of them sit there all day long, and the drivers just play board games. Anyway, we started off driving back home on the wrong side of the road against the traffic. I guess it was easier than making a U-turn at the next intersection twenty meters in front of us. Nobody cared at all though. I guess I’ve never seen it done but its normal. I wasn’t surprised at all when we started driving off the road along the side of a construction site. The driver just chuckled and said “No cars here” as we weaved around open manholes in the road. It was kind of fun, except when you remember that nobody in China wears a seatbelt. If you get in a cab and put on your seatbelt, you might just insult the driver or get a weird look. Nobody drives any faster than twenty miles an hour in Beijing though.